Have you ever wondered how some drawings can look so realistic that you almost trip (or actually trip) because it looks like you stepped over the edge of a cliff? How about those famous illusions where there's a rabbit and a duck, or 2 faces and a vase? Optical illusions have always fascinated me, not because they are cool - which they are - but because of the ability for an illusion to manipulate the way our brains interpret our vision. Let's start off easy: What do you see? A white vase? Two silhouetted faces? This illusion makes use of our mind's ability to look at positive and negative space. Some people will see the vase first, others the two faces first. I'm not sure how this affects others, but I find that with every focal change (my eyes adjusting) I flip back and forth between the positive and negative spaces. Personally, I can't see them both at once. Leave me a comment if you can see them simultaneously, it'd be neat to know whether others can see it like that. Moving forward to another one: This is another "Which do you see first?" illusion. There are two people in this picture, and by changing how you focus your eyes you can see them both. While the first illusion focused on negative and positive space, this one makes use of a single image that can be interpreted in two different ways. So who do you see first? The young woman or the old lady? Are the short lines alternating vertical then horizontal? Yes. Okay, let's agree on that. But what about the long lines? Are they randomly through the middle of the short lines and at no particular angle, or are they all parallel? You guessed it. Parallel. This is a really cool illusion that plays on our depth perception and the way we interpret 2D vs 3D. If I ignore the long lines, I see a stairway created by the perpendicular short lines. If I ignore the short lines (which is REALLY hard to do), I can see 8 parallel diagonal lines. If I look at them together my brain fights between the long and short lines, and I end up seeing long lines that are no longer parallel and look like long TV antennae. This next one is a different kind of illusion: it tricks your brain by using perspective and relativity. Which light blue circle is bigger? The one on the right, or the one on the left? We automatically see the one on the left as being larger, but those two light blue circles are exactly the same size. Why is that? This one is part perspective and part relativity (mostly relativity). The perspective part plays on your mind's natural tendency to determine how far away an object may be. Then the relativity starts. On the left, the small circles make the light blue circle look significantly larger, and compared to them, it is. Their size and tight positioning around the light blue circle also make it look like it's closer (and larger). On the right, the large circles make the light blue circle seem small, and - just like before - when they're compared, the light blue circle is much smaller. As with the image on the left, the light blue circle looks further away (and smaller) because of the size and positioning of the dark blue circles. Don't believe me? Check it with a ruler. They're the same size. This one gets me every time. As you move your eyes around the picture, you'll see grey and black dots, but never exactly where you're looking. The most common explanation for this is something called lateral inhibition. I don't fully understand it myself, but I'll try to explain it through a different example: When a small light is turned on in a dark room, what is within the light beam becomes clear, but everything outside of the beam looks darker (it increases contrast). Lateral inhibition is what is happening at the edge of that dark/light line (I think...this is my best understanding of it so far). The neuron that is stimulated is not letting its neighbours function as much (inhibition). So while one neuron is very focused on the light, the others that are focused on the dark and inhibited, and the dark looks darker. That's as far as I understood, it's an interesting read if you want to learn about the principles behind this particular illusion (called a scintillating grid illusion).
If you go over to the Happy Stuff page, I've put in a bunch of awesome optical illusions. And...don't keep watching an illusion if it makes your eyes hurt or gives you a headache. Some of them do that if you stare at them for too long.
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AuthorA volunteer. A dancer. A teacher. An observer. Archives
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